]]>https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2017/07/10/olivia-carter-on-consciousness/feed/0ptgoodbournOCSeeing blue and feeling bluehttps://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2016/08/25/seeing-blue-and-feeling-blue/
https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2016/08/25/seeing-blue-and-feeling-blue/#respondThu, 25 Aug 2016 00:20:57 +0000http://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/?p=468]]>Publishing a paper to critique a retracted paper might seem a strange thing to do. But that’s what we did. In a blog post featured on F1000Research, we explain why.

]]>https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2016/08/25/seeing-blue-and-feeling-blue/feed/0ptgoodbournAttention in timehttps://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/attention-in-time/
https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/attention-in-time/#respondTue, 23 Aug 2016 01:53:33 +0000http://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/?p=438Continue reading →]]>We have a paper in the latest issue of Psychological Science, which we’ve called Reconsidering temporal attention in the attentional blink. Those with access can read the published version at the journal website, and anyone can download our preprint from the Open Science Framework (OSF). All of the data and materials are also available at the OSF site.

Earlier on, Alex also wrote a great blog post as an introduction to the paper.

Special thanks to Ed Vul for inspiring the analysis and providing his original data.

Some people have called our current situation a reproducibility crisis. It’s hard to know how to define, exactly, the word crisis. But what we do know is that, of the efforts to try to systematically reproduce findings, whether they be in cancer biology, whether they be in psychology, the success rate has not been impressive.

More on this subject from me, soon.

]]>https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/science-vs-science/feed/0ptgoodbournOur work featured by the Psychonomic Societyhttps://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/our-work-featured-by-the-psychonomic-society/
https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/our-work-featured-by-the-psychonomic-society/#respondFri, 05 Jun 2015 12:29:58 +0000http://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/?p=417Continue reading →]]>Our paper, Sleep after practice reduces the attentional blink, has been featured on the Psychonomic Society website. In the paper, published in the journal Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, we report that performance on a temporal attention task improves after a short daytime nap. The improvement seems to be linked to the amount of time spent in non-REM Stage 2 sleep, characterised by abrupt brain waves called sleep spindles. Stephan Lewandowsky wrote this blog post about it.

The results of Cellini and colleagues add the novel finding that sleep—and in particular N2 spindles—also benefits attentional selection in time: Participants in their experiment who exhibited a greater number of spindles during their nap showed a greater improvement in T2 detection performance after their nap.

]]>https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/our-work-featured-by-the-psychonomic-society/feed/0ptgoodbournMixture modelling to measure temporal attentionhttps://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/mixture-modelling-to-measure-temporal-attention/
https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/mixture-modelling-to-measure-temporal-attention/#respondWed, 27 May 2015 04:05:02 +0000http://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/?p=413Continue reading →]]>Alex wrote a neat blog post to explain a method we’ve been using to model attention. We’re still working on applying it in a whole range of scenarios, but so far we’ve used it in papers about sleep and the attentional blink, and simultaneous attentional selection.

]]>https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/mixture-modelling-to-measure-temporal-attention/feed/0ptgoodbournMixtureModelARVO 2014 Posterhttps://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/arvo-2014-poster/
https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/arvo-2014-poster/#respondThu, 08 May 2014 01:46:48 +0000http://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/?p=355Continue reading →]]>For the past few days, I’ve been at the annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. Tomorrow is the final day, and I’m presenting my poster in the session just before the closing keynote. It’s titled Cortical patterning genes are associated with individual differences in visual orientation perception [ PDF of session abstracts ]. I’ll be in Exhibit Hall SA from 10:45–11:45 am for the all posters session, then again from 12:00–1:45 pm.]]>https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/arvo-2014-poster/feed/0ptgoodbournTalk at UC Riversidehttps://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/talk-at-uc-riverside/
https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/talk-at-uc-riverside/#respondSat, 26 Apr 2014 02:07:33 +0000http://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/?p=341Continue reading →]]>Next week, I’m leaving to spend a few weeks in the U.S. My first stop is the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside—we collaborate with Sara Mednick‘s team of sleep researchers there. I’m going to give a brown bag lunch talk on Wednesday, April 30th at 12:10pm in the Goldman Library.

The genetic basis of perceptual abnormalities in schizophrenia and autism

Deficits in sensitivity to visual stimuli of low spatial frequency and high temporal frequency (for example, ‘frequency-doubled’ gratings) have been demonstrated both in schizophrenia and in autism spectrum disorder. Basic perceptual functions are ideal candidates for molecular genetic study, because the underlying neural mechanisms are relatively well characterised; but they have often been overlooked in favour of cognitive and neurophysiological ‘endophenotypes’, for which neural substrates are unknown. Recently, we measured contrast sensitivity for detection of frequency-doubled gratings in a cohort of 1060 healthy young adults, and tested for associations with genetic markers distributed throughout the whole genome. I’ll discuss our findings, which suggest that the perceptual and psychological abnormalities observed in two different psychological disorders may be linked by common genetic elements. In the process, I’ll discuss the rationale and methodology of a genome-wide association study—a technique that is increasingly relevant to researchers in all areas of psychology.

]]>https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2013/11/28/australasian-cognitive-neuroscience-conference-2013/feed/0ptgoodbournVariants in the 1q21 risk region are associated with a visual endophenotype of autism and schizophreniahttps://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/variants-in-the-1q21-risk-region-are-associated-with-a-visual-endophenotype-of-autism-and-schizophrenia/
https://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/variants-in-the-1q21-risk-region-are-associated-with-a-visual-endophenotype-of-autism-and-schizophrenia/#commentsTue, 12 Nov 2013 05:50:00 +0000http://ptgoodbourn.wordpress.com/?p=301Continue reading →]]>I’ve recently published a paper with my Cambridge collaborators in the journal Genes, Brain and Behavior. There is a lot of research currently looking into the genetics of psychological disorders. But we now know that most result from a very complex interplay of multiple genetic and environmental factors, which makes traditional genetic approaches less useful than we might hope. One promising approach is to investigate the genetics of psychological endophenotypes—these are traits linked to a disorder, but which are likely to have a relatively simple relationship with genetic mechanisms. Basic visual functions seem to be ideal candidates for this sort of study, because in many cases we know a lot about the underlying physiology.

Other researchers have found that some people with schizophrenia have abnormal sensitivity to a whole host of visual stimuli. One class that keeps coming up is stimuli that vary slowly in luminance across space (‘low spatial frequency’) and are rapidly flickered or briefly flashed (‘high temporal frequency’). Some children with autism spectrum disorder also have abnormal sensitivity to these stimuli. In our study, we asked whether genetic differences among people with no history of psychological disorder could account for individual differences in visual sensitivity to low spatial frequency, high temporal frequency stimuli.

We found that they could. Most interestingly, the genomic region that best predicted visual sensitivity was one that has been associated previouslywith both schizophrenia and autism. The mutation with the strongest association was in a gene known as PDZK1, a binding protein that interacts with receptors known to regulate critical functions in the subcortical visual system. This starts to help us understand what might be happening when we find abnormal sensitivity in people with the disorders: Some of the same mutations that appear to convey risk for autism and schizophrenia also affect visual development. This may be through entirely different biological pathways—the PDZK1 protein has many different functions in many different parts of the body. So perhaps the association between visual abnormalities and psychological disorders boils down, at least partly, to shared genetic causes.

I’ll have a preprint available on the site soon. In the meantime, if you don’t have access to the article here, you’re welcome to contact me and I’ll email a copy to you.